Clear skies over a Bay Area that was mopping up on Sunday revealed the scale of damage from near-record rainfall that hit San Francisco particularly hard. The deluge left ongoing hazards across the region, and residents of Wilton in the Sacramento Valley were told to shelter in place in the face of widespread flooding that sprawled from a levee breach.
From Wine Country to the Central Valley, the storm brought flooded homes and businesses, mudslides and closed freeways, evacuations and rescues. Many motorists who ventured out onto the roads drove through patches of standing water, with some getting stuck and forced to abandon their ruined vehicles. Thousands in the Bay Area remained without power on Sunday.
At least one person died: At Lighthouse Field State Beach in Santa Cruz, a tree fell on a 72-year-old victim early Saturday afternoon, authorities said. The person was not immediately identified.
The National Weather Service reported Sunday that most streams and creeks had crested were slowly receding, but many remained above flood stage.
In the Sacramento Valley, a levee was breached in three places in rural Wilton, 15 minutes south of Sacramento on I-5. The Sacramento County Office of Emergency Services advised Wilton’s 5,000 or so residents to shelter in place with floodwaters rising in Consumnes River. Highway 99 was closed in both directions Sunday.
“We had a lot of people who abandoned their vehicles, Matt Robinson, spokesperson for the Office of Emergency Services, said Sunday. “There are rescue missions going on right now.”
Under a bright sun in San Francisco, washing machines and refrigerators were stacked on the sidewalk where Jose Gomez sat Sunday in a pickup truck outside his family’s appliance shop, King’s Refrigeration, on 16th Street,
“The water was up to my knees,” Gomez said, describing how his father called him to the shop late Saturday morning, when the ruthless storm had brought about three feet of rainwater into the shop, and refrigerators began floating down the sidewalk.
A family prepared for rain walks along the Embarcadero in San Francisco, Calif. on Saturday, December 31, 2022.
Adam Pardee, Freelance / Special to The Chronicle“We had to chase after them,” Gomez said.
Storm drains were clogged and water had pooled on the roads from Folsom to Treat Street, Gomez said.
In the Mission, store manager Holt Manchester at Gus’s Community Market recounted the hours of continuous Saturday mopping as passing cars had sent waves of rainwater flowing onto floors of the market and through doorways of other businesses. Manchester said he had worried about getting electrocuted using the store’s cash registers.
“We were squeegeeing the water out and it was coming right back in,” he said. Manchester also sopped water from his nearby apartment building’s entrance, but towels and sandbags did little to keep it out.
“The Muni buses coming down 17th Street were causing waves that were halfway up the doors to all the businesses, he said. “Children could have surfed these waves. I was up to my high thighs in water,” he said.
Elsewhere in the Bay Area, rising waters were reported spilling over the banks of San Francisquito Creek with flooding in the Palo Alto and Menlo Creek area, including in low-lying East Palo Alto.
Many area roads remained closed due to flooding, with dangerous conditions that prompted officials to warn residents not to drive around barricades due to water flowing deeper and faster than it appeared.
PG&E reported Sunday that nearly 15,000 Bay Area residents were without power due to storm activity. Half of these were in the East Bay, with 7,000 outages but the South Bay had 3,400 outages and the Peninsula 2,600. In San Francisco, 849 customers were without power.
In the Tahoe region, I-80 was reported open again on Sunday with chain restrictions, following Saturday night closure due to heavy snows. Caltrans warned motorists that “roads are extremely slick” and cautioned motorists to drive slowly so the road can stay open. Caltrans, the CHP and tow operators spent New Year’s Eve pulling dozens of stranded vehicles from the snow.
Tahoe-area ski resorts on Sunday morning reported snowfall of up to 35 inches over the previous 24 hours. Palisades Tahoe and Kirkwood both reported that some lifts were closed, with windy conditions on the mountains.
In San Mateo County, Highway 84 remained closed in multiple locations Sunday morning, the county sheriff’s office said. Among other roads still closed wasNiles Canyon Road near Mission Boulevard, a key route between Fremont and Sunol in the East Bay. Officials did not provide an estimate for re-opening the road.
Highway 101 near South San Francisco had reopened by Sunday, after heavy flooding shut it down Saturday, and Highway 92 in Half Moon Bay also was reopened.
If Sunday’s break in the weather offered a respite, it was to be short-lived. The National Weather Service forecast light rains Monday and Tuesday before the arrival of an even stronger atmospheric river on Wednesday.
The weekend storm, attributed to an atmospheric river that plowed over the region, nearly broke San Francisco’s one-day precipitation record. The National Weather Service reported the second wettest day in more than 170 years of record-keeping — just 8 hundredths of an inch shy of the all-time mark of 5.54 inches set in 1994.
Oakland recorded its wettest day on record since 1970, with 4.75 inches of rain, beating out the previous record set in 1982. It was the third wettest day on record for Redwood City going back to 1906, and beating out a previous record set in 1962.
But there will be heavy work ahead for many residents and business owners swamped by flood waters. In San Francisco, owners of restaurants, gyms and grocery stores were sweeping up and assessing the damage.
The Wooden Nickel bar in the Mission District was among the inundated. Instagram posts showed a person wading through water up to their knees. Another person sloshed through a layer of water that seeped into the bar’s backroom. It also appeared that a parklet near the bar had been swept away by the surging water.
In Alameda County, sheriff’s deputies said they rescued 19 older adults from a long-term care facility in Castro Valley that apparently flooded.
Attractions closed on Saturday, too, including Muir Woods, the Point Bonita Lighthouse, Tennessee Valley Beach and the Golden Gate Bridge overlook at the upper end of Conzelman Road. Officials said they were responding to reports of flooding and downed trees at the Marin County sites. Alcatraz closed as well.
Southern portions of Sonoma County, from Forest Hills down to Petaluma, appeared to have some of the most flooding in the North Bay, with several creeks overflowing.
Sam Whiting and Nora Mishanec are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. swhiting@sfchronicle.com, Nora.Mishanec@sfchronicle.com